a flobadopalop (Mrs Slocombe's Pussy - Stuart Jeffries)

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Product:	Mrs Slocombe's Pussy - Stuart Jeffries
Date:	31/07/01 (191 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Nostalgic, sometimes amusing.

Disadvantages: Over analytical.

Stuart Jeffries works for The Guardian (I can hear Sid groaning already - this op. is going to be very good for sales of whisky
if nothing else) he expects to have spent eleven years in front
of the television by the time he is 72, and he's half-way there.

He now has 150 TV channels to choose from, but not one of them shows Carol Hersey, the much missed girl on the Test Card.*
Which is a shame really. Although I can't say I miss that clown dummy monster thing she played noughts and crosses against - that must have given kids nightmares. Not me though, in my case it was Snorky from the Banana Splits that gave me the creeps.

Jeffries' aim in writing this book is to counter the notion that: "television viewing is a chain of coffee spoons leading through
an unfulfilled, worthless life."

Early on it is quite amusing and enjoyable, especially for thirty-somethings like myself who grew up with Andy Pandy, Top Cat and P.C. McGarry No.452. Uh-oh! I've mentioned Trumpton...
All together: Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble, Grub!
I laughed out loud at his description of the way he ate custard tarts (by sucking out the filling, then putting the case on his head and saying 'flobadopalop') while watching Bill & Ben as an infant.
And his comparison of Trumptonshire with Walmington-on-Sea
is just inspired - why had I never seen the similarities before?

He also suggests that the development of reality television has put us on the road to a future like that in David Cronenberg's film of J.G. Ballard's novel "Crash". But it was his egg-headed likening of Sooty to the Greek philosopher Cratylus that was a better clue to the way the book was going to develop.

Have you ever been happily stroking a pussy and then suddenly it snaps at you without warning? Well that's what happens here.
When he finally got down to Mrs. Slocombe's Pussy
, it transpired that he hates Are You Being Served? He sees in Grace Brothers
a metaphor for everything in Great Britain he finds contemptible.

What started as an amusing ramble down memory lane became
a philosophical commentary on society by the analysis of popular television. It's only TV, it doesn't need in depth deconstruction and analysis does it? I found the intellectualizationalism(?!?)
rather wearing, worse than being locked in the Big Brother house with Dean and Elizabeth (oops that's earned me another NU from Sid - if he hasn't nodded off already.)

He also launches an assault on Billy Connolly's anti-PC ranting and the "thick people in his audiences" pointing out that "political correctness isn't a term invented by social workers; rather, it is one that is consistently invoked to defend everything from telling anti-Irish jokes to the notion that Benny Hill was a comic genius."
Yet, strangely, he says nothing about Jim Davidson.
Perhaps it was unprintable.

There are some good bits later on, his description of a 'duel' between overblown darts commentators for example, and it has a frightening amount of trivia. (Either he's been keeping a diary
of his television viewing since childhood, or he must have done an incredible amount of research.)

At the end there is a helpful TV-ography, with humerous potted descriptions of the programmes talked about in the book.
I say 'useful', rather than 'very useful' as they are listed in order of their appearance in the book rather than alphabetically.

"Mrs. Slocombe's Pussy" is one of those bright yellow books
that you might come across in branches of The Works for £3.99.
I came across it in the mucky books section of my local library,
(as regular readers will have guessed) and as it wasn't as funny as I thought it was going to be, this is one
pussy I'm glad I didn't splash out on.



*For the benefit of youngsters, the test card was shown on BBC and ITV when they shut down during the daytime. No, seriously. They really did. No Richard & Judy, no Neighbours, nothing.
Just a pretty pattern and some bland music. Imagine instrumental versions of Westlife hits playing over a shopping centre tannoy.

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